


The Talk

by numb3r5ev3n



Category: Tron - All Media Types, Tron: Legacy (2010)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-29
Updated: 2013-01-29
Packaged: 2017-11-27 09:40:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/660469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/numb3r5ev3n/pseuds/numb3r5ev3n
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clu asks Flynn how Users are formed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Talk

They're standing atop a rocky outcropping overlooking the city when Clu drops the bomb.  
  
“Flynn,” Clu innocently asks, as the two of them are marveling at the splendor of their combined handiwork, “where do Users come from?”  
  
“Woah, buddy. You never ask the easy ones, do you?” Flynn responds sheepishly.  
  
“I'm just curious,” Clu says. Programs are written, coded, imprinted with their directives by the Users. They are created with a function and a purpose. Most Programs, Clu knows, don't even think about how Users are formed. To them, Users simply are; eternal and timeless, dwelling in an outer void beyond their understanding.  
  
But Clu is different. He was created in the User's own image, and he wants to know.  
  
“Well, uh, it happens like this...”  


....

  
  
Tron catches up to them just as Flynn is reaching the end of his explanation, the roar of his bike drowning out the sound of Flynn's voice. Tron has no idea what is being discussed; but from Clu's expression and the gestures Flynn is making, he figures that it must be rather convoluted. Tron half-expects the User to whip out a diagram in midair.  
  
“...so that's pretty much it. Any questions?”  
  
“Wow,” Clu says. “That's it?” he chuckles, a response that Tron has already started to recognize as a mask for feelings of insecurity.  
  
“What's it?” Tron asks, as he finally joins the pair.  
  
“Man, I'm not sure you even wanna know,” Clu quips.  


....

  
  
It's some time after the arrival of the ISOs, and during one of Flynn's long, unbearable absences, when Clu goes back over the long-ago conversation in his memory.  
  
(He does this a lot; there are some microcycles when it feels like his memories of Flynn - Flynn's presence, his approval, his mere proximity - are the only things keeping him together.)  
  
For all of their majesty and power, it seems to him that the Users are reckless for trusting something as crucially important as their own reproduction to blind chance. He finds himself wondering for the billionth about this Jordan woman, about this son thing that Flynn has sired upon her. This is what is demanding so much of Flynn's time, of late; the arrival of Flynn 2.0, or something like it.  
  
That is, when he isn't obsessing over the ISOs.  
  
And suddenly, Clu gets it; Flynn's preoccupation with the Isomorphic Algorithms. Or he thinks he does, anyway. They too, are creatures of chaos and blind chance.  
  
“So that's what makes them so _miraculous_ ,” Clu sneers.  
  
Like all Programs, there is nothing that terrifies Clu more than the thought of obsolescence. Particularly when it is brought about by entities who are not even of Flynn's making. The thought that Flynn _might not need him anymore_ is something that shakes Clu to his very core.  
  
Of course, Clu is aware that the grid is basically Flynn's testing ground. He's always known, at least on an intellectual level, that something bigger and better might come along in the course of Flynn's experiments; and that whatever happened here, his “real life” took precedence. He just wasn't expecting to be supplanted like this; not so cruelly, and not so soon.  
  
These feelings would crystallize into something even more insidious by the time Flynn returned to the grid.  


….

  
  
Hundreds of cycles later, Rinzler is dragging the last of the ISOs before him.  
  
She's everything he hates and despises; everything he secretly envies. He was willing to endanger the integrity of the grid itself just to be rid of them. And yet, here she is; and he can't stop thinking about how good she looks or how nice she smells, any more than he can halt his body's inevitable reaction to this stimuli.  
  
His mind goes back to that long-ago conversation with Flynn, even as she scoffs at him.  
  
“I've seen what the Users are capable of. You don't belong with them.”  
  
He knows now what he didn't know then - that Flynn intends her DNA to act as a jumping-off point towards the next phase of human evolution; as a “patch” to the Users' own organic code, which is already starting to grow stagnant and decay.  
  
He's going to be in the Users' world, soon, he thinks - and so will she. If the gift of her genetic code is going to pass to the human race, it's going to have to go through his first.  
  
“I have something _very_ special in mind for you,” Clu tells her, as he strokes her hair.


End file.
